In the Khartoum region, explosions, heavy gunfire and explosions rocked residential neighborhoods. Plumes of smoke rose over Bahri.
“We hear the sounds of planes and explosions. We don’t know when this hell will end,” said Mahasin Al-Awad, 65, a resident of Bahri.
“We are in a constant state of fear for ourselves and our children,” she added.
The Sudanese army directs air strikes with combat or drone aircraft to the Rapid Support Forces deployed in neighborhoods in the capital, where many residents suffer from difficulty in obtaining food, fuel, water and electricity.
In a statement, the Rapid Support Forces accused the army of violating a truce agreement brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia by launching air strikes on its bases in Omdurman, the city across from Khartoum on the other bank of the Nile, and Mount Awliya.
The army blamed the RSF for violating the armistice agreement.
The ceasefire is supposed to last until midnight on Sunday.
Sudan.. between the hammer of the army and the anvil of rapid support
- Despite global calls for talks, army chief Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said it was unacceptable to sit with the head of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, whom he described as “the leader of the rebellion.”
- Dagalo, known as Hemedti, said the RSF would not hold talks until the fighting was over. He said that the armed forces bombed his fighters relentlessly, and blamed Al-Burhan for the violence.
- “Stop the fighting. Then we can have negotiations,” Dagalo said.
Darfur deaths
- A spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ravina Shamdasani, said that at least 96 people have been killed in Darfur since Monday in tribal violence sparked by the conflict between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.
- It added that the release of prisoners or their escape from at least eight prisons, including five in Khartoum and two in Darfur, exacerbated the chaos.
- The charity Doctors Without Borders said a large hospital it supports in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, had been looted over the past two days.
- The United Nations said its offices in Khartoum, El Geneina and Nyala were also ransacked. “This is unacceptable and prohibited under international humanitarian law. Attacks on humanitarian facilities must stop,” UN aid coordinator Martin Griffiths wrote on Twitter.
- Aid agencies have been largely unable to distribute food to those in need in Africa’s third-largest country, where a third of its 46 million people already depend on humanitarian aid.
Refugees as evacuation flights continue
- The violence has pushed tens of thousands of refugees across Sudan’s borders and threatened to exacerbate instability across a volatile region of Africa between the Sahel and the Red Sea.
- Governments of countries have flown diplomats and citizens to other safe areas over the past week. Britain said the evacuations would end on Saturday as demand for aircraft space fell.
- The United States said several hundred Americans had left Sudan by land, sea and air. The New York Times reported that a convoy of buses carrying 300 Americans left Khartoum late on Friday for a 525-mile trip to the Red Sea, the first US-organized evacuation effort for citizens.
- Egypt said it received 16,000 people, while Chad entered 20,000, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 14,000 people crossed the border into South Sudan, which declared its independence from Khartoum in 2011 after decades of civil war.
- A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said some had walked more than 400 km from Khartoum to the South Sudanese border. Khartoum is one of Africa’s largest cities and has long spared the horrors of a series of civil wars in Sudan.
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